Is old technology putting the NHS at risk?

Windows 7, the nine-year-old system software, reached its End Of Life (EOL) at the start of this year, although a lot of healthcare trusts and organisations still have computers which are running it

Whilst Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 way back in January 2015, the extended support has now also finished (unless you want to pay additional expensive support fees from Microsoft). This means there are no more bug fixes or security patches leaving your technology significantly more susceptible to viruses and malware attacks.

Malware attacks on hospitals, are increasing, with a 60% increase in 2019 compared with 2018 according to the ‘The State of Healthcare Cybersecurity’ report from Malwarebytes. With some of the most sensitive and personal medical information stored on hospital computers, alongside critical system infrastructure, it’s crucial to make sure your IT department is keeping your software up to date. Additionally, with the proliferation of home working where possible within the sector it has never been more important to ensure the upmost security of critical data, enabling increased collaboration, compliance, access rights and speedier decision making.

Combined with this security threat, there is also the chance that your newer hardware may no longer work with Windows 7, leading to time wasted on troubleshooting, and your capital expenditure sitting there unused like an expensive paperweight!

New technology offers time and cost saving benefits

Technology continues to advance, and you may also be missing out on time-saving new features and services available on newer equipment. Fujitsu have continued to innovate and their latest scanner models have a range of new benefits which can save time and money for NHS Trusts.

For example, the Fujitsu fi-7160 is a scanner with market-leading document image capabilities, offering fast scanning in colour at speeds of up to 60 pages per minute. Innovations such as iSOP (intelligent Sonic Paper Protection) will even listen to the paper as it passes through the scanner, listening for anomalies like staples or paper clips which may cause paper jams or sub-optimal image capture.

Moving up the range to a departmental level, the Fujitsu fi-7460 scanner has a wide range document feed capability from A8 to A3 sized documents. The 100 sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) has stacking control and a skew reducing function, meaning that a wide range of document sizes can be scanned in one go, without needing to be sorted into batches.

For large scanning jobs, the Fujitsu fi-7600 is a heavy duty production scanner, capable of scanning up to 100 pages per minute from a large document feeder capacity of 300 sheets, suitable for continuous scanning. This improves efficiency whilst allowing for various types of documents to be scanned, including plastic cards and envelopes.

All of these scanners come with ‘PaperStream IP,’ the powerful scanning software which will clean up the toughest document for improved OCR (optical character recognition), auto rotation, and a facility for automatically filling in hole punches in the paper and torn edges, to give the cleanest results possible.

Whilst older Fujitsu scanners, such as the Fujitsu fi-6130/6130Z have been extremely popular with NHS Trusts, they too, have now been superseded by newer, more efficient technology, and may have problems working with the latest Windows 10 PC’s in the future, whilst missing out on the benefits these new features offer.

UK government advocates the use of new technology in the NHS

The UK government through the digital aspirant programme are aiming to modernise working practices and processes and encourage the whole of the NHS to make use of the latest technology to underpin digital transformation. Matt Hancock commented, “We’re going to use digital technology to ease the burden on staff, give people the tools and information to manage their own healthcare, and make sure that patient data can be safely accessed wherever and whenever it’s needed across the system.

“It’s quite simple: better tech means better health and social care.”

If your scanner technology is more than five years old, it is time to take a look at what is now available. The money saved through improved efficiencies and processes may mean the new investment costs are recouped within a much shorter timeframe than you imagine!

To find out more about Fujitsu scanners, click here or call 020 8573 4444.

Download Fujitsu’s Organisational Intelligence report and understand how information capture is enabling digital transformation success.